Exactness
by Random Guise
Summary: Young Milo finds a pair of twin cities not mentioned in the book "The Phantom Tollbooth". I don't own the character of Milo, but I do make enough grammar and spelling errors to probably keep a podcast going.


**A/N: Based on the book The Phantom Tollbooth, and takes place early on after Milo visits Expectations and says goodbye to the Whether Man.**

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Exactness

"Now that I've left Expectations behind me, I truly must be on my way" Milo muttered to himself as his car motored down the road toward Dictionopolis. "I had to picture it in my head, but 'Whether Man' does _sound_ like 'Weather Man'. But they sure mean different things! He just sits there biting his time..."

Poof!

Suddenly a woman was sitting in the seat beside Milo in a fine green dress. "You better slow down up ahead, Milo; you're going to be in town in a moment."

"Who are you?" Milo asked. He would have asked her for her ticket, but realized that he hadn't issued any.

"I'm Miss Poken, the Mayor of the fine town of Seditrong. Normally you would have driven around our town, but it gets bigger every time someone says something incorrectly and adds another citizen to our group. There is yours now..." She pointed to a man standing at the side of the road, trying to chew on a clock.

"I did that?"

"You sure did! The correct way to say it is '_biding_ his time', not '_biting_ his time'. There's one that's just popped in" she said excitedly, pointing out a woman who had her arms crossed and standing facing away from a bed while looking around as though she were entirely bored. "My guess is that one is probably 'sleep apathy' instead of 'sleep apnea'."

"But it was just a little mistake; I only got one word wrong" Milo protested.

"But one word can make all the difference when someone is listening to you; it can change the meaning of everything! If I said 'worse comes to worse', it wouldn't make any sense because it's the same thing; but if I said 'worse comes to worst', it means that whatever was happening became even more terrible. You can't get too lazy with your words or people will misunderstand you."

"Irregardless of what I mean, you mean."

"_Regardless_ of what you mean, I mean. Irregardless isn't really a word even though it's supposed to mean the same thing even if you take off the first two letters" Miss Poken corrected. The car jerked as Milo braked when a goat clad in stripped pajamas ran across the road in front of them. It was pursued by a police officer blowing a whistle and waving a baton.

Milo blushed. "I think that one is mine, too. I said 'escape goat' instead of 'a scape goat' yesterday, didn't I?"

"We caught yours already" Miss Poken assured him. "That one belongs to someone else. You better come to a stop here" she indicated as they pulled up to a crossing guard. Stepping out, she explained "Seditrong is a twin city; we are next door to Roatitrong. That is the mayor coming to greet us now." A woman that could have been a twin of Miss Poken wearing a green dress (although it was greener than the green she wore) walked up and the two women hugged. "Milo, this is my sister Miss Peld."

"How do you do, Milo! Welcome to my town; let me show you through on your journey."

"Thank you, Miss Peld." The mayor climbed in as Miss Poken waved goodbye and the crossing guard was lifted, allowing Milo to continue driving forward. "I didn't even know these towns existed."

"Of course they do - they're right here on your map." Miss Peld opened the map and pointed out where the two towns were, in the center of a region called Incorectica. "The towns lay right here. Sometimes they stand to stretch, but usually they just lay."

"Don't you mean they lie there?" Milo questioned.

"Oh heavens no; people shouldn't lie, and neither should towns. Honesty is the best policy no matter who you are! The Great Cartographer put us on the map, so he _lay_ the towns there."

"So what happens in _your_ town" Milo asked.

"My sister told you how her town gets bigger when people misspeak something; well, my town gets bigger when someone misspells something."

"But" Milo asked "don't people usually know what you meant to say?"

"Sometimes they can - that's called context. But sometimes the results can be quite unusual. Stop at this building here" she directed. Milo pulled up in front of a building with a sign that read 'Deli'. "Come inside with me, and I'll show you what I mean." The two hopped out of the car and went into the deli.

"Good morning Mayor" the owner called as they entered.

"Good morning, Dell. This is Milo; why don't you show him your latest oven?"

Dell agreed and led Milo over to a low work table, on which sat a large metal box with dials and a handle. "This is the new oven I ordered to cook chickens" Dell explained. "But it's completely useless."

"Why's that?"

"I wrote down the order wrong; I ordered a 'Boaster over' instead of a 'Roaster oven' and now all the thing does is brag about what a great job it can do, but it never actually gets around to cooking anything." To prove his point, Dell set the dials and opened the oven by the front handle.

"Oh, come on Dell - you know that's too hot" the oven started to complain. "Trust me - I've been cooking chickens for a lot longer than you have. The only way to do it properly is at a medium temperature. I remember a time..." the oven droned on until Dell closed the door.

"You see, all it wants to do is talk about how it can do it better" Dell bemoaned. The sound of scraping could be heard at the side door, and Dell went over to answer it, grabbing a carrot off the counter. He opened the door and revealed a very small pony; he gave the creature the vegetable and it trotted away. "Sorry about that," he explained "my daughter had to stay home from choir practice today because she was a little horse." He closed the door, and Miss Peld thanked him for his time before ushering Milo back to the car.

"So you see," she said as they continued driving on down the road "even one letter can make a big difference when you are writing. You must be very careful or it changes the meaning entirely. If you are not careful, something you misspell today could be misspoken tomorrow."

They drove by a church where a newlywed couple was walking out the front steps while a long line of other couples waited to go in. Milo frowned for a few moments and then smiled as he realized what he was seeing. "I always got the spelling for today wrong; I keep putting it down as 'Wedsday'." For it was true, Milo ignored many things at school and how to spell the day after Tuesday correctly was one of them.

"That's right. Remember, you wouldn't have gotten this far if you had tried to start your journey coming through a toolbooth. Now pull up here at this arch and I will bid you a fond farewell. Good luck on your voyage to Dictionopolis!" the mayor called as she climbed out.

"How did you know where I was going?"

"Oh," she said with a grin "it must have been written on the wind."

Milo drove through the arch and continued on his quest. Looking up into the blue sky, he couldn't help but see the clouds that formed the message "Milo seeks Dictionopolis".

As he drove along the highway he soon fell to daydreaming...

The End

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**A/N: Quite the clever book, and educational too. During a discussion with my mother she kept using the term 'Sleep apathy' instead of 'Sleep apnea' and the thought was so amusing I had to work it into a story somewhere. What better character to spring in onto than Milo from The Phantom Tollbooth? I slipped this short in between Expectations and the Doldrums.**


End file.
